Mississippi Power Company is an investor-owned electric utility and a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlanta based Southern Company. Mississippi Power Company (MPC) is headquartered in Gulfport, Mississippi.

On March 16, 2009, Entegra Power Group LLC and Magnolia Energy LP, requested that the Public Service Commission (PSC) suspend action on the certification of public convenience and necessity pending an analysis of Mississippi's future energy needs. On April 3, 2009, the Sierra Club argued against the certification of public convenience, stating that a NEPA review and air permit must first be completed. Attorney General Jim Hood has also supported the motion. On May 5, 2009, the PSC held a public hearing on the motion but a ruling has not been issued yet.[4]

In May 2010, MPC said it will move forward to build the costly Kemper County IGCC plant after state regulators loosened restrictions that the utility said earlier would kill the project. MPC has said it expects customer rates to increase by one-third over the next decade -- with or without Kemper -- as it meets future power needs and complies with environmental regulation. It said fuel savings from Kemper would eventually allow rates to stabilize, although testimony at the regulatory hearings showed the plant might never provide savings for customers, depending on future gas prices.[5]

The plant will get $682 million in federal subsidies and tax credits, and an unspecified amount of federal loan guarantees. Southern and its peers have been scouring the Southeast since 2003 for locations where carbon dioxide gas can buried. One option under consideration is nearly depleted oil fields, where oil companies pay $30 per ton for carbon gas used to force more oil to the surface, said Tom Sarkus, of the Clean Coal Power Initiative: "We have all this talk about carbon caps and the oil industry can't get their hands on enough CO2." Southern has injected about 4,000 tons of carbon into test wells in Mississippi and Alabama. Each of Southern's coal plants emit 1 million to 5 million tons of carbon dioxide yearly.[6]